4 ms·

The 615 got a lot of bad press and much of it was not deserved. There was that apocryphal claim it took an "eternity" to mode-switch, but while the penalty was

The 615 got a lot of bad press and much of it was not deserved. There was that apocryphal claim it took an "eternity" to mode-switch, but while the penalty was non-trivial (a pipeline spill), it was definitely faster than claimed. This was probably no small amount of FUD on Microsoft's part so that they wouldn't have to support it. The real irony was the existence and support of Windows NT on PowerPC (up to the W2K betas), so Microsoft actually didn't have much of a beef with supporting the architecture in general after all; they just didn't think doing the engineering on the 615 specifically was worth the cost.

mrpippy 8y ago
Microsoft dropped support for NT 4 PPC in 1997, very early in the release cycle. SP2 was the last update that had PPC support. Maybe you're thinking of Alpha, that was much better supported and was only dropped during the Win2K RCs. https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc-no-more https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc-no-m...
- classichasclass 8y ago
  Ah, yes, I was thinking of Alpha. But NT4 was still a full fledged product on PowerPC at least for a period of time, so my larger point stands.
WorldMaker 8y ago
The Microsoft and IBM back and forth will forever be a defining characteristic of the history of computing. It's almost a shame they haven't played a good round in a while, but that seems as much of anything IBM's search for relevance post-"We're just a consulting firm, and maybe Cloud, something, something, everything is 'Watson' now".
puzzle 8y ago
Microsoft didn't do much or any work to support PowerPC, actually. It was mostly paid by Motorola, which created a team in Austin to do the port, to be sold for their PowerStack machines: https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/cmpcon/1994/5380/00/00282910.pdf https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/cmpcon/1994/5380/0... I remember rumours that Motorola also paid Microsoft money for the privilege of doing all the work.

mrpippy 8y ago

Microsoft dropped support for NT 4 PPC in 1997, very early in the release cycle. SP2 was the last update that had PPC support. Maybe you're thinking of Alpha, that was much better supported and was only dropped during the Win2K RCs. https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc-no-more https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc-no-m...

classichasclass 8y ago
Ah, yes, I was thinking of Alpha. But NT4 was still a full fledged product on PowerPC at least for a period of time, so my larger point stands.

WorldMaker 8y ago

The Microsoft and IBM back and forth will forever be a defining characteristic of the history of computing. It's almost a shame they haven't played a good round in a while, but that seems as much of anything IBM's search for relevance post-"We're just a consulting firm, and maybe Cloud, something, something, everything is 'Watson' now".

puzzle 8y ago

Microsoft didn't do much or any work to support PowerPC, actually. It was mostly paid by Motorola, which created a team in Austin to do the port, to be sold for their PowerStack machines: https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/cmpcon/1994/5380/00/00282910.pdf https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/cmpcon/1994/5380/0... I remember rumours that Motorola also paid Microsoft money for the privilege of doing all the work.